


Forty-Five Missiles

by ckret2



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, references to off-screen canon-typical Decepticon atrocities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-22 02:56:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14299239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ckret2/pseuds/ckret2
Summary: In which Prowl shows off his only two skills: calculating trajectories and orchestrating massive plans. (Written for the prompt: “Something happy with Prowl?”)





	Forty-Five Missiles

Seventeen Autobots, with vents frozen, stared up at a screen. It was displaying a black sphere covered in still, bright purple dots. Slowly approaching the purple dots were several blinking red ones. 

It was the most fascinating bunch of dots any of them had ever seen. 

Eight star systems away from the nearest Autobot base, and twelve planets away from their current temporary station, was a Decepticon outpost—a weapons manufacturing facility, being run by alien slave labor. Aside from the slaves, it was almost entirely automated, with less than a dozen Decepticons to control tens of thousands of laborers. Less than a dozen was all they needed—most of the work of controlling the slaves was performed by an automated weapons system that corralled the population and fired on prisoner fights, dispensed food only when work quotas were met, and sounded alarms when it detected the barest whisper of rebellious talk. Furthermore, they'd all but eliminated the possibility of escape or rescue by completely seeding the star system with mines that could sense, chase, and destroy anything that got too close to them. Just outside the orbit of the planet, the net of mines was so dense, it dimmed the sunlight. Not even a car could squeeze between the mines undetected. 

A car couldn't—but forty-five missiles with meticulously-calculated trajectories could. 

Which was why Prowl was here. 

And one way or another, it was thanks to Prowl that they were _all_ here. It had been one of his agents, still undercover in the Decepticons, who discovered this weapons manufacturing facility. It had been another agent (Skids, who was in the room now, although no one else had been told his role in all this) who had discovered while on a diplomatic mission that the facility was populated by enslaved alien—shortly before the Autobots had planned to throw so many bombs at the planet the surface would be liquefied even after the mine field took out some. They’d had to immediately cancel that plan and look for some way to destroy the facility without killing the aliens. 

Over the next couple hundred years, Prowl had slid another spy into the group of twelve Decepticons stationed on the planet, to get them intel from the inside; had sent three scouts to painstakingly map out the galaxy; and had personally mapped the movements of every mine, celestial body, and asteroid belt in the system. 

It had been Prowl who had tracked down someone at the Kimia Facility who could design missiles small enough and maneuverable enough to get through the narrow gaps, thus Wheeljack’s presence too. (Not because Wheeljack had made the missiles, but because somebody who knew how they worked had to be there to get them prepped and install the guidance software, and—according to Wheeljack—the missiles' actual inventor shouldn't be trusted within ten lightyears of a planet full of unknown Decepticon weapons tech, lest he be inspired.) And Prowl had consulted with a dozen different tacticians, two of whom were in the room now, before selecting the forty-five targets they would aim for on the planet below. 

Even Springer and Impactor were present, the rest of the Wreckers waiting on their ship—"Either to go take those dozen Decepticons alive," Prowl had said, "or to fight their way in if the missiles don't work." 

If the missiles didn't work, it could mean anything from the death of all the aliens on the planet, to the swift location and annihilation of the small Autobot station from which this operation was being carried out. 

The latter of these risks was the reason—the _only_ reason—that Optimus wasn't present for such a major operation. (Prowl had spent several weeks talking him out of coming.) But he was here in spirit, hovering spectral green in the room through a hologram projector. Watching. 

They were all watching. 

Watching the missiles, and watching Prowl. 

Prowl was sitting at the front of the room, looking straight up at the projection of the globe, his optics glowing so bright they were almost white. His processor fans were audible from every corner of the room, whirring furiously to keep pace with his calculations. The only sound competing with them was the clicking of his fingers on a keyboard. He'd decided that this operation was too delicate for him to risk letting the missiles go down on autopilot, and so he was flying them manually. 

Who else could do it? Of all the Autobots here, only Springer came close to matching Prowl's ability to track and calculate a multitude of trajectories at once—but unlike Prowl, he could only track them. He'd never needed to learn how to manipulate them. It had to be Prowl. 

Wheeljack had offered to set him up with a joystick to pilot them, but Prowl had declined, for two reasons. One, he wasn't dexterous enough to use one; and two, a joystick could only control one, but he needed to steer all forty-five. Yes, simultaneously. No, he couldn't fly one at a time—many of their targets were interstellar comm towers and most of the rest controlled the weaponry aimed at the native population. If they only hit _one_ or _some_ of the targets in the first wave then the Decepticons might radio for help or slaughter their hostage slaves. It had to be all of them, at once. 

Prowl had been planning this operation for centuries. Everyone in this room knew it, because he'd brought everyone to this room as part of that plan. Everyone in this room knew what it might cost if a single thing went wrong. And they were all watching him, as he adjusted the course of every single missile, sometimes one-by-one and sometimes a handful in synchronized movements and sometimes a couple dozen veering sideways all at once, as he carefully, carefully, so carefully, so quickly, snuck them past the minefield wrapped around the planet. 

His vents hitched once (and consequently, another half dozen mechs' did as well), as a notification popped up stating that missile #33 had come dangerously close to triggering a mine. (They were _all_ dangerously close, all the time; that notification popped up only when a missile was within an inch of going too far.) Prowl frantically corrected the course, and the notification went away. It didn't help relax him at all. 

Not until every single missile was through the minefield. 

He was going to make it. 

From that point, getting all the missiles to their targets was a snap. Just point them in the right direction, waste a little time zig-zagging the ones that were closer to their targets so they didn't get there too soon, and... 

All forty-five red dots hit all forty-five purple dots within a second. All forty-five flashed white, and then disappeared so quickly and so neatly that it looked more like the simulation had suddenly shut off than like the mission had been successful. Which was why Wheeljack, who'd been leaning over Prowl's shoulder this whole time, asked, tentatively, "... That all of them?" 

Prowl nodded sharply. "That's all of them," he said. "Every one." 

All right, he thought. They'd need a moment to process that, but the cheering would begin at any time. 

There it was. The expected hooting and hollering. Job well done. (Job _very_ well done, he thought. A Decepticon weapons facility destroyed, a whole planet of aliens liberated, and not a single Autobot _or_ alien life lost. How often did that happen? How often could he save everyone, accomplish everything, and lose nothing?) 

The hooting and hollering were expected. The clapping—not excited clapping, but actual _applause—_ was not expected. He turned around, surprised, to look at the rest of the room. He also hadn't expected everyone to be looking at him. 

But they were. And they were smiling. He didn't think that had ever happened before. 

"Beautiful!" Wheeljack clapped a hand on Prowl's shoulder, making him start. "I didn't think you'd pull it off." 

Why would Prowl have attempted it if he couldn't pull it off? But he decided to simply accept the compliment for what it was and nodded. 

A bigger, heavier hand clapped Prowl's other shoulder, and Prowl started again. He looked up at Springer. "It's a shame," Springer said, although he was smiling. "I was looking forward to battling my way through a whole planet of automated weaponry." 

"I'm sure you'll get another opportunity someday," Prowl said. "You'd better get moving. You've got a spy to extract and eleven soon-to-be prisoners of war to capture, and you don't want to give them time to recover from the shock." 

"Right, right." Springer jogged over to where Impactor was waiting by the door. "Minefield's down?" 

"All three stations controlling it." 

"Then let's go!" Springer was out the door, and Impactor right behind him. Prowl watched him go, then settled back in his chair, prepared to bask in the rare bounty of peer approval. 

"Prowl." 

Prowl was immediately on his feet, facing the hologram. "Optimus, sir." 

"So." The resolution wasn't great, but Prowl was _sure_ he could see the twinkle in Optimus's optic. "All went according to plan?" 

The beginning of a smirk twitched at the corner of Prowl's mouth. "Yes, sir." 

"The most long-laid plan I've seen to date." 

"Not my longest," Prowl admitted, "but it's up there." 

"I see," Optimus said. "Well. You did some fine work." 

Prowl's already elevated mood shot straight up, and ended up hovering somewhere in the vicinity of cloud nine. "Thank you, sir." 

Optimus nodded. "I'll take care of contacting the Galactic Council to let them know we have some refugees for them to pick up, and I'll delegate someone else to getting the refugees onto a neighboring planet to wait so we don't have to worry about the Council landing on a planet loaded with Decepticon technology." 

Oh, this was going to score the Autobots massive diplomatic points with the Council. "With all due respect, Optimus, I'm already here, and I can—" 

"I'm completely confident that you can, Prowl. But you've earned yourself a break. Enjoy your victory." 

Prowl considered protesting, decided that taking a break while surrounded by mechs who currently thought he was a missile-mastering magician didn't sound so bad, and nodded. Optimus nodded back, and the hologram flickered off. 

Prowl settled back into his chair, looking around the room with a wholly unfamiliar sensation that he thought might be contentment. Skids caught his optic and gave him a thumbs up. Prowl gave a thumbs up back. 

Yeah. Okay. Enjoy his victory. He could do that. 

**Author's Note:**

> You can also read/like/reblog this fic [on tumblr](http://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/170711456112/prompt-something-happy-with-prowl).


End file.
